I want to return to the situation in our emergency departments. As the Taoiseach knows, hospitals have not been able to sustain the figures that we saw over the Christmas break. They have really struggled. They have cut activity in hospitals to try to manage the situation, but we know that this could not last forever. This morning, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation reported 654 people on trolleys. The Irish Examiner, as was alluded to, reported that an 87-year-old man spent 100 hours waiting at University Hospital Limerick. Another 90-year-old was on a trolley for five days in the emergency department. The simple fact is that our hospitals are short-staffed and we are currently short 1,000 beds. In the budget for this year the Government did not just fail to address that issue, but it made a deliberate decision to underfund the health service and restrict recruitment. Can the Taoiseach reverse this decision? All of the evidence is before our eyes and we need an intervention now.

There were just under 500 people on trolleys in our hospitals this morning, which is a high number and is not acceptable. It has a significant impact on their patient experience and also makes things very difficult for staff. Thankfully, most of those patients will be in beds by this evening. The level of overcrowding we have seen in our hospitals this January, thankfully, is considerably lower than was the case in previous Januarys, in part because of the additional resources provided by the Government, including beds and staff. The budget for the health service has increased substantially for this year. The HSE will be able to hire 2,000 extra staff on top of the number of staff it had last year.